The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise quality as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Audience response systems (ARS), in which group members use handsets to vote on topics, answer questions, confirm attendance, etc., are commonly used today to facilitate group interaction. Audience response systems can be employed for a variety of purposes and in various types of group environments. As one example, audience response systems are used by teachers in a classroom setting (e.g., to take attendance, or to administer tests and quizzes), and research indicates that there are various benefits to using audience response systems in such a setting. For instance, audience response systems reduce the effect of crowd psychology because, unlike hand raising, audience response systems may prevent students from seeing the answers of other students. For similar reasons, audience response systems may reduce instances of cheating in the classroom. Furthermore, audience response systems typically allow faster tabulation and display of answers and a more efficient tracking of individual responses and other data (e.g., response times of individual students). Additionally, audience response systems in classrooms have been shown to improve attentiveness, increase knowledge retention and generally create a more enjoyable classroom environment and a more positive learning experience.
In a typical audience response system architecture, multiple handsets associated with different users communicate wirelessly, e.g., using radio frequency or infrared communication technology, with one or more wireless aggregation points that generally collect and, possibly, process the data communicated by the audience via the handsets. A wireless aggregation point is typically (but not always) communicatively coupled to a control station, such as a personal computer, that runs a program that generally controls the operation of the audience response system. That is, the control station may be used to process information received from the handsets and to determine what information is sent to the handsets.
In order for an audience response system to function properly and effectively, the handsets typically need to be configured (and sometimes reconfigured dynamically) to operate together in an efficient manner, and without interfering with one another. Generally, configuring a handset involves defining (or providing a value for) one or more operating parameters associated with the handset. Operating parameters associated with a given handset may include, a unique (or a quasi-unique) handset identifier (ID) that identifies that handset, one or more parameters defining a communication channel (e.g., a particular frequency or a frequency band used for communication) that the handset can use to communicate with the wireless aggregation point, one or more parameters defining various keys that the handset can use to establish a communication link with the wireless aggregation point (e.g., synchronization keys, an encryption keys, access keys), and so on.
Operating parameters of handsets are typically defined, at least in part, manually (e.g., by a teacher), and defining and redefining these operating parameters can be a burdensome task. For example, operating parameters typically need to defined for each handset in the audience response system before the handsets can be used, so that, for example, no two handsets have the same handset ID, or share a communication channel in a conflicting manner. Additionally, because of the dynamic nature of many audience response systems, and/or environments in which they operate (i.e., handsets and/or wireless access points are periodically replaced, new ones are added, new communication channels, encryption keys are introduced, user preferences change), operating parameters of a handset may need to be redefined dynamically in response to changes in the audience response system. For example, when a given handset has its handset ID set to a particular value, if another handset has its handset ID set to the same value, the two handsets (or at least one of them) may need to be reconfigured so that the two handsets have different handset IDs.
As a result, teachers may end up spending significant time configuring and reconfiguring handsets, or even just verifying that the configuration of each handset is proper. This may render the audience response system prohibitively inefficient and its use unjustified.